


all alone in left field

by Anonymous



Category: Gideon the Ninth - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Gen, baby lyctors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:47:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22213531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Ianthe can't fight without her right hand, and Harrowhawk's eyes don't change color.
Kudos: 24
Collections: Anonymous





	all alone in left field

"Naberius isn't left-handed," whined Ianthe, and threw her rapier on the ground. Harrow wasn't sure how much of that was Ianthe and how much Tern: the cavalier's hazel eyes kept flashing into Ianthe's pale purple while they worked on fencing.

Harrow had been watching her own face in the mirrored wall, hoping for a glimpse of Gideon, but her eyes stayed a disappointing, disappointed, black all lesson long, despite the sense of Gideon animating her arms and legs and missing the massive two-hander. There wasn't any actual verbalized complaint, but Harrow could feel it in her muscle memory: the rapier was too light, too flimsy, and what was she going to do with her other hand--

She was going to throw bones with her other hand. That made sense to her new self, at least.

Their fencing instructor, the original Sixth Lyctor, looked at Ianthe without pity. "You're the one who lost your right arm," she said. In many ways she was the physical opposite of Palamedes--short, dark and round--but she also wore glasses, and had a dry, matter-of-fact way of speaking. "You'll have centuries to learn to fight with your left, provided you don't get yourself killed first."

"I don't see why I simply can't make myself a new arm." Ianthe tried to put her hands on her hips, but she only had the one.

"You do," said Shi. "You were smart enough to put together the theorems, you are smart enough to know that when Cy--when Cy took your arm, she took its thalergic potential. You can't replace that. Please don't try again."

Harrow agreed. The first attempt by the Emperor's surgeons had withered and fallen off; the second, by Ianthe, had collapsed in a spray of yellow fat and red blood and grisly scraps of muscle. It had been perfectly revolting and Harrow had wished Gideon could have seen it. Harrow had imagined Gideon's disgusted noises, her exaggerated gagging, but of course it hadn't been the same. Some days it took everything Harrow had to get out of bed in the morning, to not lie there and cry until her eyes were swollen shut. But she got up, and she painted her face, and she showed up for the training sessions with whichever Hand could be spared at the same.

Harrow watched, and Harrow learned.

The other Lyctors' eyes would change color from time to time. Shi's occasionally flashed a pale green. Thorn's alternated between icy blue and gray. Harrow was fairly sure Cat's were two different shades of brown, depending on how much input her cavalier was providing. Only Harrow's eyes stayed resolutely black over the months they were on board the Emperor's ship.

She could have asked the Emperor, or his Hands, but she didn't trust them. Not with Gideon. Not with how jagged a hole Gideon's death had ripped in her, or her unseemly jealousy that for all that they'd lost _their_ cavaliers, there was still something left. Harrow felt like there was a black hole inside of her, something that had already eaten two hundred children, something that took, and took, and took, and hurt, and hurt, and hurt.

None of the other Lyctors mentioned it. Harrow didn't know if they assumed her cavalier's eyes had been the same color as hers, or if they knew her cavalier was gone, and were too kind--or horrified--to say anything.

Ianthe Tridentarius was not so circumspect, and no one could have ever accused her of being kind. She lurked outside of Harrow's quarters and accosted her one evening. "Nav's eyes were yellow," she said, by way of greeting. "What have you done with her?"

"Perhaps she simply has better things to look at than you," said Harrow coolly. If Gideon had been there, she'd have made a much more vulgar retort, but she wasn't, and didn't.

"Please," said Ianthe, matching Harrow stride for stride, "don't imagine you can fool me for one second. You didn't take of her body, did you?"

Harrow had a sudden foreboding of what Gideon would say about taking of her body, and she shivered.

"We're not their first choices," said Ianthe. "We were their only choices, even if our ascents weren't quite perfect."

Harrow pressed her lips together. 

"You didn't meld fully with Nav." But that was a lie, Harrow had felt Gideon's arms around her, heard her whispering in her ear as she held Gideon's sword, as they defeated Cytherea. It would have been awful, to have Gideon always near her, knowing she was dead, and yet it would not have been awful, to have Gideon always with her. "I didn't fully meld with Naberius. He fights me, you see."

"Becoming a Lyctor is based on a willing sacrifice," said Harrow, "and you murdered your cavalier."

"It still worked," said Ianthe, "didn't it?"

It had. How efficient a Lyctor she could be with a cavalier that didn't want to be there was debatable, but, as the Emperor had said, the Lyctors that had emerged from Canaan House this time had done so in less than ideal circumstances. And the cold, hard truth of the matter was that without Ianthe's ascension, Harrow would not be here to remind her. Ianthe had been crucial in their fight against Cytherea, and Harrow--Harrow was two hundred murders. Two hundred and three, if the deaths of her parents and their cavalier counted. She had no moral high ground.

"And don't think," said Ianthe, "that I don't know how the old Lyctors think of me. That they could repair my arm, and simply choose not to, to punish me."

It was rank paranoia, and Harrow did not think the Lyctors would be a party to such pettiness. But she also did not want to give it any credence because that would mean the Emperor and Lyctors were lying, and the Emperor had told Harrow he could not bring Gideon back.

"You murdered your cavalier," she repeated, but slower: she knew how effective a technique it was to annoy others. (Mostly Gideon, who had then turned around and used it back on her, and it had been extremely annoying.)

"How else was I supposed to become a Lyctor? You saw Babs, he wasn't the heroic, self-sacrificing sort."

Harrow had seen Naberius Tern, and she supposed that being stuck with him for thousands of years would be its own sort of punishment. "After you'd left, your sister said you could have taken her."

There was an instant of pure reaction, of stricken pain Harrow hadn't seen on Ianthe's face since Cytherea had cut off her arm, had drained her for the thalergy. "I couldn't kill Corona," Ianthe said, too hurt by the very idea of her sister's death to invent a clever lie as to why not, except that she had loved her. In that moment, Harrow sympathized with her, almost liked her. 

"But if you tell anyone about that," said Ianthe, drawing herself up straight, her pale purple eyes narrowing, "I will kill you."

Harrow respected that, but all she did was raise an eyebrow. "You mean you'll try."

She thought Ianthe smiled at that, and maybe this wouldn't be so terrible. They weren't quite as alone as all that.


End file.
